A flaw was found in Dropbear. When running in multi-user mode and authenticating users, the dropbear ssh server does the socket forwardings requested by the remote client as root, only switching to the logged-in user upon spawning a shell or performing some operations like reading the user's files. With the recent ability of also using unix domain sockets as the forwarding destination any user able to log in via ssh can connect to any unix socket with the root's credentials, bypassing both file system restrictions and any SO_PEERCRED / SO_PASSCRED checks performed by the peer.
History

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 23:30:00 +0000


Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description A flaw was found in Dropbear. When running in multi-user mode and authenticating users, the dropbear ssh server does the socket forwardings requested by the remote client as root, only switching to the logged-in user upon spawning a shell or performing some operations like reading the user's files. With the recent ability of also using unix domain sockets as the forwarding destination any user able to log in via ssh can connect to any unix socket with the root's credentials, bypassing both file system restrictions and any SO_PEERCRED / SO_PASSCRED checks performed by the peer.
Title privilege escalation via unix domain socket forwardings
Weaknesses CWE-266
References
Metrics cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.4, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N'}


cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: fedora

Published: 2026-02-12T21:37:57.157Z

Updated: 2026-02-12T22:10:33.107Z

Reserved: 2025-12-08T17:48:22.565Z

Link: CVE-2025-14282

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-02-12T22:16:03.373

Modified: 2026-02-12T23:16:09.120

Link: CVE-2025-14282

cve-icon Redhat

No data.